The 2018 movie Avengers: Infinity War is the first of a two-part finale, culminating over 18 previous marvel movies and over 10 years of work. The film is suspenseful, action-packed, hilarious, heartbreaking, and has some of the most impressive visual effects in the entire film industry. The movie had the fourth biggest budget of any film before it, and its amazing visuals are clearly representative of that fact. Everything from full characters, to small atmospheric additions, are animated, marking an achievement that couldn’t even be imagined 40 years ago.
Avengers: Infinity War is the third Avengers movie created by the Marvel franchise. Viewers get to follow the main villain Thanos on his quest to obtain the 6 elemental infinity stones scattered throughout the universe. Each stone controls an essential aspect of the universe such as space, power, time, soul, reality, and mind. Thanos planned to harness the combined power of all 6 stones to wipe out half of all life in the entire universe in an attempt to solve hunger, overpopulation, and other various problems plaguing hundreds of civilizations. Thanos is shown as an approximately 7-foot tall muscular titan, voiced and acted by Josh Brolin. In the past, it was very uncommon to have an entirely 3D CGI main character in a live-action movie for various reasons. First, how do you get a virtual 3D model to interact with real-world actors? The trick in many scenes in this movie was animating the main characters as well. During battle scenes, main heroes such as Iron Man, Spiderman, The Hulk, Black Panther, and others were also 3D models. This way, animators could much more easily have character interaction, which is necessary in a combat-heavy sci-fi superhero action movie. Computer animation wasn’t used until 1973, and it was a revolutionary upgrade from independent practical effects. However, it wasn’t perfect, it continued to evolve year after year, and still continues to do so today.
One of the most difficult things for professional animators to create is a realistic face. Thanos is an excellent example of a near-perfect facial construction, something that many movies of the past struggle to do. Animating a face that looks indistinguishably realistic and one that is comparable to that of a real human is no easy feat. Every minor detail such as a character’s pores, skin movement, mouth shape, scar tissue, bone structure, and many other factors all affect each other when someone does something as simple as speaking. In order to achieve this indistinguishability, these CGI artists must meet the criteria that determine the realism of a face. DC’s 2017 Justice League is a great example of subpar animation, specifically on the facial reconstruction of Superman. Henry Cavill (the actor of Superman) needed to keep an unshaved mustache as part of his contract for another film, meaning a team of animators worked on recreating his head and face to give the illusion that it was still him. Unfortunately, they faulted mainly on the mouth movements, making him look inhuman and awkward. However, Marvel’s Thanos is a much different story. They wanted him to resemble his actor Josh Brolin despite Thanos being a huge purple alien who barely resembles a human. In general terms, the team of animators created a scan copy of Josh Brolin doing a series of different facial expressions to map how it moved. They then took this data and ran it through a variety of different simulations to create facial features that interact with each other such as pores, remnants of facial hair, scars, etc. From there they designed the rest of his head and body, which was then the replacement of Josh Brolin when Thanos needed to interact with non-CGI things. They did this by using the movements captured by the motion-tracking suit that Brolin was wearing while filming to get a basis for the movements of Thanos. They proceeded to then remove Brolin from the picture replacing him with their newly made model of this giant purple titan.
To put into perspective how artistically talented these animators are, think about the fact that Thanos is one character. Hours upon hours were put into making him alone, yet Avengers: Infinity War has more than a dozen other CGI characters as well as animated environments, vehicles, creatures, magic, planets, stars, weapons, and more. You could say other films or shows of the past have done this, such as many of Disney’s or Pixar’s animated pictures, but none have been able to compare to the indistinguishable realism from the combination of practical and visual effects in this movie.
Overall, Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War is a fantastic surreal artistic masterpiece both visually and through a storytelling perspective. The adept artistry of the intricacies that older movies failed to create mark this film as a glorious achievement in the entire film industry. Movies such as The Mummy, X-Men Origins, and Green Lantern all feature main characters that are laughable in quality in comparison to the detail behind Thanos. Ironically, Thanos ended up accomplishing his mission to obliterate half of all life, and yet the artisanship of his character is seen as a crowning achievement.
